L'écriture-femme

Cousin Phillis

by Elizabeth Gaskell

Katherine L. Beard (fl. 1885-1890) Spinning

In June 2000 Judy Geater proposed that a group of us on Trollope-l read with her Elizabeth
Gaskell's Cousin Phillis. She consistently posted each week, with others responding
to her. A subgroup on Trollope-l is a group of at least 8 people who say on list they will read a
particular novel together and then go ahead.

We had before this had had on Trollope-l a subgroup of people who read Gaskell's
Cranford (led by me) and on Litalk-l a group of us had read Wives and
Daughters (led by John Mize). Since Cousin Phillis, we had a group read on
Trollope-l of Gaskell's North and South, at first led by Beth J and then taken ove by
Judy.

Here is the calendar Judy constructed:

Calendar for Cousin Phillis

I thought we could start on Sunday July 16 and read the novella over four
weeks, as follows:

July 16: Part I

July 23: Part II

July 30: Part III

August 6: Part IV

Judy began it:

To Trollope-l

Hello all

With our Cousin Phillis subgroup in mind, I've been looking around for a few
interesting Gaskell weblinks, and found the following, all worth a look:

http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/gaskell/gaskellov.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jgaskell.htm

http://www.gaskellsociety.cwc.net/

http://search.britannica.com/search?query=elizabeth+gaskell

I'll also repeat the link Dagny posted to Mitsu Matsuoka's wonderful Gaskell Web, which is a
real mine of information with just about everything anybody could possibly want to know!

The story is told by Paul Manning, who recalls how he moved into lodgings in the small
county town of Eltham at the age of 17, starting a new job as a clerk working for an engineer on
a new railway branch line.

He lives over a pastrycook's shop kept by the two elderly Miss Browns, who mother him, but
do not approve of the engineer, Mr Holdsworth, because he has lived abroad and has continental
manners.

Paul's family belongs to the Independent non-conformist church, so he goes to chapel twice
every Sunday and occasionally visited the minister (Mr Peters) for tea.

When he is nearly 19, Paul mentions in a letter home that he and Mr Holdsworth have visited
the village of Heathbridge. His mother tells him by return post that she has distant relatives in the
area - her second cousin, Phillis Green, is married to Independent minister Ebenezer Holman.
Paul's parents are keen for him to track down these relatives and visit them. He is at first
reluctant to visit yet another minister, but, after he discovers that they are indeed living in the
village, Mr Holdsworth sends him off to see them.

Paul is made welcome by the Holmans and is struck by the beauty of their daughter, Cousin
Phillis, who is 17. He is invited to spend the following weekend with the family, and meets the
minister, who is also a farmer. During the weekend Paul has slight differences of opinion with
both the father and daughter, but the arguments quickly blow over and he and Phillis become
firm friends.

I've been racking my brains over why Gaskell chose the various names in Cousin
Phillis from reading some of her other works, I know she always chooses her names with
care. So here are a few thoughts... perhaps others can add more.

The name which struck me most was "Holman" - the surname of Cousin Phillis's family, but
which seems to belong especially to her father, Ebenezer Holman.

This immediately suggests "whole man" - and I'd say that in this opening section the farmer-
minister is presented as just that, a man who has a grasp both of everyday realities, such as
caring for his stock, and of spiritual realms - plus an interest in education, shown in his unusual
encouragement to his beautiful daughter to learn Latin and Greek.

I'm not so sure why she called this powerful character "Ebenezer" though - I'm afraid this
immediately suggested Scrooge to me, which I'm sure wasn't the intention!;-) Looking up the
meaning of the name in my dictionary, I find it means "stone of help" but I'm not sure what a
stone of help would be. Any ideas?

Following on from Holman, the name of Paul's boss, the engineer, Mr Holdsworth (we don't
know his first name, so far, anyway) seems to contain a similar pun - he "holds worth," ie is a
well-to-do young man in financial terms. But will he actually prove to be worthy in more moral/
spiritual terms? Those "mustachios and whiskers of a somewhat foreign fashion" sound rather
foreboding!

The other name which seemed particularly evocative was that of the heroine, Phillis (also the
name of her mother). This name strongly suggests a shepherdess/ pastoral heroine to me, but
I'm not sure why... I thought there was a Phyllis in Philip Sidney's Arcadia, but, looking at the list
of characters, it seems my memory is playing me false here - although I see there is a shepherd
character, partly based on Sidney himself, called Philisides, so perhaps that's what I was thinking
of.

I looked up this name in Chambers dictionary too, and found that both Phillis and the
alternative spelling Phyllis mean "a leafy shoot" - suggesting that the heroine is strongly rooted in
nature and in the world of the countryside around her.

I don't really have any ideas on why the hero is called Paul Manning, I fear.

After we've just been discussing the role of railways in Trollope, I was interested to see that
Gaskell's Cousin Phillis starts with the arrival of a branch railway in an isolated
community - linking the small county town of Eltham with the village of Hornby.

"Eltham, like Cranford, Duncombe (in 'Mr Harrison's Confessions'), and
Hollingford (in Wives and Daughters) is traditionally assumed to be based on
Knutsford, the Cheshire town where Mrs Gaskell grew up. A railway was constructed at Knutsford
in 1862, and this may well have led Mrs Gaskell to consider the kind of impact it could have on
relatively isolated communities, though the actual setting of Cousin Phillis is some
twenty years earlier."

The opening pages of Cousin Phillis seem to be very much in the nostalgic
world of Cranford, with the isolated community and the two elderly spinsters running the shop
where the young hero, Paul, moves into his first lodgings.

But, as in Cranford, it's a community which is on the point of change - a pastoral
which has had its day, and the coming of the railways dramatises the impact of the outside world.

In this opening chapter, I was interested to see that the farmer-minister Holman, Phillis's
father, is not especially enthusiastic in his reaction to the railways.

Sounding slightly conceited on his father's behalf, Paul asks Holman "Have you not heard of
his discovery of a new method of shunting? It was in the Gazette. It was patented. I thought
everyone had heard of Manning's patent winch."

Holman puts the teenager in his place with his rather wry response: "We don't know who
invented the alphabet."

This suggests that he has mixed feelings about progress and the encroachment of the
outside world - as does his following comment: "But your father must be a notable man. I heard
of him once before; and it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge."

With the coming of the railways, the distances dividing isolated country communities will
become much smaller, and the people of Heathbridge will hear not only of Mr Manning senior,
but of many other people from far more than 50 miles away!

I have a feeling there are quite a few Victorian novels where the arrival of the railways is an
important theme - but they don't come to mind at the moment. Can anybody think of any?

Holman Hunt painted "The Light of the World", which was exhibited Royal
Academy 1854. Cousin Phyllis started publication November 1863, so we may
have an attempt to link the theme.

Thanks, Rory - I would never have thought of this! Holman is such an unusual
name that I'm sure you are right and a link with the painter, and the theme
of his most famous work, is intended.

I found a copy of the painting you mentioned, "The Light of the World" on
the web at this address:

http://www.artmagick.com/paintings/hunt/hunt3.jpg

It takes a minute or two to load but is worth the wait.

Rory had quoted Judy:

"Ebenezer" though - I'm afraid this immediately suggested Scrooge
to me, which I'm sure wasn't the intention!;-) Looking up the meaning of
the name in my dictionary, I find it means "stone of help" but I'm not
sure what a stone of help would be. Any ideas?"

He answered:

"Many of the Non-Conformist places of worship are called by such names:
Ebenezer, Syon, Bethel, Temple, Tabernacle... and to those involved the
precise name indicates the precise type of service (perhaps even degree of
strictness, though as I come from a different Christian tradition, I might
be out of my depth)."

Thanks for this, too. I've actually seen chapels called Ebenezer, but the
thought hadn't struck me - probably because I was too busy trying not to
think about Scrooge( and failing dismally).

It seems as if Ebenezer Holman's full name links a famous picture of Christ
with the non-conformist chapels - perhaps suggesting that his character is
not purely a narrow sectarian, but keen to go back to the Bible and follow
Christ's teachings direct, as the mention of Greek and Latin also suggests.

Light seems to be an important element in this opening section (which I find
an amazingly rich piece of writing), often focused on the figure of Phillis.
When she first appears, Gaskell writes: "The westering sun shone full upon
her, and made a slanting stream of light into the room within."

A little later, we are told: "Inside the house sate cousin Phillis, her
golden hair, her dazzling complexion, lighting up the corner of the
vine-shadowed room."

I was reminded of the comment in Pere Goriot: "This natural victim was...
Pere Goriot, on whose head a painter, like this historian, would have
focused all the light in the picture."
In the case of Phillis, she appears to be a source as well as a focus of
light - almost as if she has her own golden halo, in an echo of Christ in
Holman Hunt's picture.

Bye for now,
Judy Geater

I responded to Judy and Rory:

Re: Cousin Phillis: The Exquisite Tones

One of the sources of pleasure in all
Gaskell's fiction is her control of tone. Phillis is
a traditional shepherdess's name and this is a sort
of pastoral. It does recall Cranford, only
Cranford is more satiric. It began
as a series of half-mocking sketches of a group
of self-important powerless women, caught up in
a backwater they are comfortable in, but one into
which the 19th century modern world impinges.
So one elderly lady loses all her money; she
has a brother who has something of a nervous
breakdown because harassed by the father,
he leaves for India and returns at the end with
money. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality which
undercuts the warmth and Gaskell is not fond of
the snobs. She also likes to pinpoint how irrational
people are.

This story has the same nostalgic note, only here
it is sort of a warm sunny one which is not criss-
crossed by satire. Nothing undercut, nothing
tongue-in-cheek. And no fragility to be seen. Gaskell
manages to convey to us that the solemnness of
young Manning is too earnest, indeed at moments
a bit silly, but she does this through his interactions
with other and his own self-deprecating comments.
Still he is sturdy, a survivor. I agree that Holman
Hunt could be meant, though I wouldn't lean too heavily
on any specific religion; my editor talks of the
links between Gaskell's characterisation and
unitaritarianism (which is not Christ-centered) so
In Cranford the ladies were mostly elderly and
the love romances don't come off quite. I would
call the tone here delicately erotic, but erotic it
is. Paul is deeply allured by Phillis; she radiates
sensuality contained by chastity. Her strength
is a function of her womanliness. The father's
tone also has a vein of warmth, cordiality, self-
respect and kindliness that is appealing. We
are made to like these people. They seem to
respect the right things, Virgil, Dante, there is
great humanity here.

If I were to name a literary work that Gaskell
wants us to think about or see her work in
terms of I'd say Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.
Gaskell quotes the famous opening sentence
about the blue bed to the brown: Goldsmith's
sentence is a picturesque and packed way
of talking about movement from the cradle
to the grave and one season to another. His tone
and depiction of a more innocent people apart
from the rest of the world who get pulled
into it very drastically recalls Gaskell's
here:

We had no revolutions to fear, nor
fatigues to undergo; all our adventures
were by the fireside, and all our
migrations from the blue bed to the
brown ...

You might say Gaskell's book is a 19th century
rewrite of The Vicar. The Vicar has resonances
which recall Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's
Candide. It has dark pessimism in other words.
The religion is one of reason, of rationality; the
Vicar preaches a wonderful sermon against
capital punishment founded on reason (not
the Bible). Gaskell's world is one which has
seen the revival of religiosity and the surge
of evangelicalism, fundamentalism too. Yet
it is a world where science is making itself
felt (railways). She keeps the young man
innocent too, under the beck and call of
relatives. Paul reminds me of the hero of
Lorna Doone. Same tone, same kept-in
super-respectful attitude towards authority.

It's also wonderful stylistically. The lightness
of touch, the dialogues which are naturalistic
yet intellectual. The concise description.
She's an artist. That's why she's good at
short stories and writes them. Short stories
take aristry, especially ghost stories: she
wrote a few great ones.

Some curious things: she has made Phillis
tall, much taller than Paul. That is undercutting
the stereotypes. In fact short men sometimes
marry tall women. With all her supposed
innocence of the world, Paul is far more
of the child. The talk about angels:
"angels is dead folk". There's a joke going
on here, maybe a private one between Gaskell
and her husband. Authors put into their
books private jokes.

Doesn't a fellow walk in front of a train in Cranford? It's been a while
since I read Cranford but as I remember it, a man was so engrossed in
reading (an installment of a novel?) that he came to grief in front of a
train. The death of the character moved the plot forward, and the inside
joke was that the poor fellow was utterly absorbed in the fiction of a
(competitor) writer. What the man reading? (Dickens?) And was this incident
in Cranford?

Another general thought - the railways made fox hunting more accessible for
city dwellers.

I hadn't thought of how the railway Paul is helping build might encroach on
the Rev.'s way of life (thanks to Judy for bringing it up!), and wonder if
that will become important later on. It it important or symbolic that the
railway people are having problems finding a patch of solid ground for the
tracks to lie on?

Thus far, having only read pt. 1, I am having trouble finding a conflict
that a plot would hinge on. It makes me interested in what the story will
be "about."

he first pages introducing Paul's relatives confused me for a while, until
I guessed that Phillis was both the name of the Rev.'s wife *and* his
daughter. I started out thinking the girl was the wife, and the woman a
sister-in-law.

"Doesn't a fellow walk in front of a train in Cranford? It's been
a while since I read Cranford but as I remember it, a man was so engrossed in
reading (an installment of a novel?) that he came to grief in front of a
train. The death of the character moved the plot forward, and the inside
joke was that the poor fellow was utterly absorbed in the fiction of a
(competitor) writer. What the man reading? (Dickens?) And was this
incident in Cranford?"

Thanks for this! This classic plot twist actually caused one of several rows
which took place over the years between Dickens and Gaskell.
Cranford was being serialised in Dickens' magazine All the Year Round - so
he decided to be modest and censor the mention of Pickwick, much to
Gaskell's dismay.

In Jenny Uglow's biography of Gaskell, she writes:

"The death of Captain Brown was the first time that Dickens ventured to
edit without Mrs Gaskell's approval, changing the book that the Captain reads so
enthusiastically from Pickwick to Hood's Poems. This was
understandable, as he could not be seen to puff his own book in his own journal, but Elizabeth
was extremely upset, also understandably, as the contrast between Johnson's
solemnity and Dickens's humorous humanity was integral to her argument. When
she objected, he took shelter behind a favourite excuse:

'I write in great haste to tell you that Mr Wills in the utmost
consternation has brought me your letter just received (4 o'clock) and that
it is too late to recall your tale. I was so delighted with it that I put it
first in the No. (not hearing of any objection to my proposed alteration by
return of Post) and the No. is now made up and in the Printer's hands. I
cannot possibly take the tale out - it has departed from me.'

He would do anything (he said) rather than cause her a minute's vexation,
and signed himself 'the unfortunate but innocent, Charles Dickens'. There
was nothing she could do except put Pickwick back as soon as Cranford
was published in volume form, in 1853."

Being a fan of French novels (well, my reputation is
now ruined for sure), the following passage leaped
right out at me:

" . . . Miss Hannah caught me up, and spoke of the
sinfulness of such sights, and something about
wallowing in the mire, and then vaulted into France,
and spoke evil of the nation, and all who had ever set
foot therein . . . "

From time to time on the VictorianFiction list we have
noted the attitudes of characters regarding the
reading of French novels. It tends to denote loose
morals, and even if the person reading those dreadful
French novels is totally innocent, their reputation
can be virtually ruined should their reading tastes be
discovered. Now, apparently one cannot travel to
France either and hope to return to this small village
with reputation intact. :-)

Dagny

Zubar Amir wrote in:

Somebody -- apologies as I can't remember who -- brought up Gaskell's use
of names, which in Paul's case seems very deliberate. "Manning" is surely
meant to point us powefully towards Paul's relative immaturity (and his own
anxieties about when he will become a "man"/be "manned"?/etc.). Holdsworth
holds Paul's attention (no pun intended there!) not just because he "holds
the position of hero in my boyish mind" but is also fascinating on account
of the "mustachios and whiskers of a somewhat foreign fashion" that Paul
lacks. And we get more longing for facial hair in that extremely peculiar
dream at the end of Part I: "I went to bed, and dreamed that I was as tall
as cousin Phillis, and had a sudden and miraculous growth of whisker, and a
still more miraculous acquaintance with Latin and Greek. Alas! I wakened
up still a short, beardless lad..."

Some curious things: she has made Phillis
tall, much taller than Paul. That is undercutting
the stereotypes. In fact short men sometimes
marry tall women. With all her supposed
innocence of the world, Paul is far more
of the child. The talk about angels:
"angels is dead folk". There's a joke going
on here, maybe a private one between Gaskell
and her husband. Authors put into their
books private jokes.

I like that private joke idea - it would be interesting to know if a
youngster ever said just these words to Gaskell's husband. I know that he
wrote one or two amusing incidents into the manuscript of Elizabeth's Life
of Charlotte Bronte, quoting the exact words which country people said to
him - so it's very possible.

Although the "angels is dead folk" passage is amusing, I also found it very
striking and odd, and wondered if it might be some sort of ironic reference
to the "angel in the house" stereotype. Coventry Patmore's poem was very
popular at the time of Phillis, so the phrase would have been current.
Sadly, when I looked up Jenny Uglow's passage on Cousin Phillis in her
(wonderful) Gaskell biography, I found that she'd thought of this first - so
I suppose I'd probably remembered the idea from reading her book, rather
than thinking of it myself! And just when I thought I was being original...

Anyway, Uglow writes:

"Men see themselves as 'naturally' born to
independence, both created to rule and allowed to transgress. Holman
reassures the Heathbridge boys that, if they did not run races and spill
milk they would not be boys, but angels. (And, as the boys point out, they
could not be that, for 'Angels is dead folk.') While most women remain
angels in the home, men are physically, intellectually and socially mobile;
they run races; they compete."

I suppose the adventurous young boys who are so dismayed at the idea of
being "angels" would probably be equally dismayed at the restrictive lives
which girls have to lead.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Phillis is constantly associated with
light, and at times seems to have her own halo from the sunlight shining on
her golden hair and pale skin. One sentence particularly seems to create the
"angel in the house" image:

"Inside the house sate cousin Phillis, her golden hair, her dazzling
complexion, lighting up the corner of the
vine-shadowed room."

This is reminiscent of a painting, perhaps a pre-Raphaelite one - but, as
this opening section shows, Phillis does not want to be trapped in the
static life of a domestic angel. She likes to be outdoors with the animals,
and yearns to expand her mind, too, by learning the Latin and Greek which
she grasps so eagerly.

I enjoyed the portrait of Rev. Holman, combination
minister and farmer. What a hard-working man. That's
country life when you don't have the means to hire
enough help to do all the work. Sometimes I think we
read so many novels focusing on the gentry or the
county families that we forget how hard a life it is
for the small land-holder. It seems that Rev. Holman
enjoys doing much of the work himself. To me that
seems to be the difference between its being a good
life or a bad life. So his life is hard but good. His
working in the fields reminded me of a few instances
in Anna Karenina when Levin worked in the fields; he
loved it and felt it made him feel alive.

That comment which Ellen highlighted, "Angels is dead folk," has been
running through my mind... so, further to my earlier post, here are a few
more thoughts.

Although the context is humorous, the thought is strikingly similar to a
moving passage in Wives and Daughters, Gaskell's unfinished novel (and
masterpiece) written straight after Cousin Phillis.

The heroine, Molly, says in chapter 11:

"perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while;
perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves you know, and this
is *now*, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not
angels, to be comforted by seeing the ends for which everything is sent."

Here, too, "angels is dead folk" - Molly seems to assume that some day we
will be among the angels, but she has no longing for that unknown realm,
instead, very humanly, clinging to the here and now... just as, on a lighter
note, the boys in Cousin Phillis would rather cause trouble and spill
"Mammy's milk" than be transformed into unnatural and dead visions of
perfection!

"I enjoyed the portrait of Rev. Holman, combination
minister and farmer. What a hard-working man. That's
country life when you don't have the means to hire
enough help to do all the work. Sometimes I think we
read so many novels focusing on the gentry or the
county families that we forget how hard a life it is
for the small land-holder. It seems that Rev. Holman
enjoys doing much of the work himself."

I agree, Dagny! Holman is a brilliantly-drawn character - at first, as a
reader I found myself trying to fit him into pigeonholes, but, despite the
small space Gaskell has to work in, he is very much an individual -
humorous, sometimes argumentative, yet deeply spiritual too.

Dagny:

"To me that
seems to be the difference between its being a good
life or a bad life. So his life is hard but good. His
working in the fields reminded me of a few instances
in Anna Karenina when Levin worked in the fields; he
loved it and felt it made him feel alive."

That's a great comparison - I suppose if there's a difference it is that
Levin is really working in the fields as a hobby, whereas for Holman it is
part of his livelihood. Yet both of them link the life of the land to the
spirit. For Holman farming is very much tied up with his religion, which is
why I said he was a "whole man" earlier, but reading on he seems to be a
more complicated individual than either that suggestion or "holy" man might
imply.

I agree that 19th century novels often tend to concentrate on the richer
families, perhaps especially in country scenes - it's refreshing to come
across a book which looks at the lives of people living and working on the
land on more modest incomes.

At times reading Cousin Phillis I was reminded of Hardy, with all his
beautiful and haunting descriptions of the countryside and old farming
ways - often suffused with the sunlight which Rory noticed in Phillis.

I've just caught up with the list on my reading of Cousin
Phillis. What a delightful story it is. I saved up all
your posts and have really enjoyed reading them all at once.
Thank you.

The pictures it brings to my mind are those by Helen
Allingham which show cottage life. The moment in the
fields where a hymn is sung also reminds me of "The Angelus"
by Millet where labourers bow their heads on their spades
as the bells ring out. I think these pastoral moments are
so well caught for us by Gaskell. Its a great pleasure to read.

I have not read Cousin Phillis before but I fear we are in the
same moral world as Wives and Daughters where what seem trivial,
but may be proved to be profound, differences
of moral life are going to come into painful collision.

Angela

Judy responded:

I don't think I've come across Helen Allingham's pictures or The Angelus -
does anybody by chance have a link to either or both?
This whole thread has got me wondering whether Cousin Phillis was
illustrated when it first appeared, either in those four monthly parts or in
volume form - I don't think there's a mention of any illustrations in my
copy, but that doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any. I'll try to find
out, unless, of course, anybody else already knows!
On a similar tack, does anybody have a copy of Phillis on its own - and, if
so, could you let me know what painting has been chosen for the cover? My
copy is a Penguin which also includes Cranford, so the cover picture doesn't
especially relate to Philli.

Angela also wrote:

"I have not read Cousin Phillis before but I fear we are in the
same moral world as Wives and Daughters where what seem trivial,
but may be proved to be profound, differences
of moral life are going to come into painful collision."

Without wanting to give too much away about the plot, I think you are right
in your suspicions here, Angela. Cousin Phillis was written just before
Wives and Daughters and the mood seems to be quite similar in some ways,
although of course the two works are very different in others, partly
because of their respective lengths.

When Phillis first appears, she is vividly described, in a passage suggesting a painting,
where the whiteness of her skin especially shine out, lit up by the setting sun:

"I see her now - cousin Phillis. The westering sun shone full upon her, and
made a slanting
stream of light into the room within. She was dressed in a dark blue cotton of some kind; up to
her throat, down to her wrists, with a little frill of the same where it touched her white skin. And
such a white skin as it was! I have never seen the like. She had light hair, nearer yellow than any
other colour..."

I'd already thought that the descriptions of Phillis in this opening section suggested the
"angel in the house" image - and this impression was rather confirmed today when I was reading
part of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century
Literary Imagination by Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

During a discussion of Emily Dickinson, Gilbert and Gubar give an account of the typical
Victorian angel-woman - which has striking similarities with Gaskell's portrayal of Phillis.

They write:

"The Victorian iconography of female whiteness is to begin with, most
obviously related to the Victorian ideal of feminine purity. The angel in the house is a woman in
white, like
Milton's "late espoused saint," her dutiful chastity manifested by her virginal pallor, her marble
forehead, and the metaphorical snowiness of the wings Victorian poetry imagines for her.
Passive, submissive, unawakened, she has a pure white complexion which betrays no self-
assertive consciousness, no desire for self-gratification. If her cheeks glow pink, they glow with
the blush of innocence rather than the flush of sensuality. Ideally, even her hair (as Leslie Fiedler
has noted) is celestially golden, as if to relate her further to the whiteness of heaven, that city of
glitter and pearls where puritan renunciation is rewarded with spiritual silver and
gold."

This description fits Phillis in some ways - most strikingly the white skin "And such a white
skin as it was!" Also her hair, described as yellow here but golden in other passages, is the hair
of an angel - and often catches the light.

As Gaskell introduces Phillis, I think she creates an expectation in the reader that the
beautiful young heroine will be a typical domestic angel - but, at the same moment, she starts to
undercut this conventional expectation, and show us that this young woman is an individual, and
made of flesh and blood, not marble.
The mention of her throat and wrists immediately gives a sensuous touch, suggesting the rest of
her body which is covered up - and the dark blue cotton certainly isn't what we'd expect an angel
to be robed in, let alone the pinafore which she is also wearing!

As the first section continues, we discover that Phillis, with her passionate interest in reading,
her love of animals and nature and her sometimes witty comments (the amusing conversation
about eggs and potatoes) has her feet firmly set on earth, and does have a certain un-angelic
longing to assert herself.

Going back to Gilbert and Gubar's book, the next paragraph after the one I quoted is also
interesting, and I think it casts more incidental light on the puzzling phrase in Cousin
Phillis "Angels is dead folk."

They write: "As we have already seen, Snow White is one prototype of this angelic virgin,
and, as in so many fairy tales, her name goes to the heart of the matter. for her snowiness is not
just a sign of her purity, but the emblem of her death, her entranced indifference to the self-
assertion necessary for "real" life. cold and still in her glass coffin, Snow White is a dead objet
d'art, and similarly, her metaphorical cousin the snow maiden/ angel in the house... is an angel of
death, a messenger of otherness, a spirit guide who mediates between the realms of the Above
and the Below."

You can certainly see why the naughty boys who spill the milk prefer to be human rather than
heavenly. It seems as if this kind of deadening and suffocating portrait of holiness was an awful
lot for any young Victorian maiden to live up to!

The Oxford paperback has an illustration from In
Osterly Park by Frederick William Hulme showing
a country lane with trees and three small figures
in the foreground with a dog and some other
figures off in the distance. Not as good as
The Angelus but fitting the scenes in the story.

Cousin Phillis first appeared in the Cornhill
and I don't think it would have been illustrated there.

Paul's first visit to his cousins at Hope Farm continues. Phillis is trying to read Dante in the
original Italian and finding it difficult - Paul mentions that his boss and friend, Mr Holdsworth, can
speak Italian, and suggests that he could ask him to help Phillis. She is tempted by the idea but
turns it down.

Paul continues to visit the family at least once a month during the autumn, and their
friendship grows.

Towards Christmas Paul is visited by his father, a gifted engineer, who joins him on a visit to
the farm. Mr Manning senior gets on well with the minister, but Cousin Holman is not so
delighted when he sketches out a design for a turnip-cutting machine on her clean white dresser.
Mr Manning is impressed by Phillis in particular, and after the visit he suggests to Paul that she
would be the right girl for him to marry. However, Paul explains that he and his cousin see each
other as brother and sister. Holdsworth walks in during the conversation, and is clearly
interested in what he hears of Phillis' beauty.

In the New Year, Holdsworth falls ill with "low fever" and is very poorly for many weeks. Even
when he starts to recover, he seems depressed and lethargic. Paul is worried about his friend,
and talks about his concerns to the family at Hope Farm, who suggest that Holdsworth should
visit them to help his convalescence. The two young men get to the farm early in the morning
and meet Phillis on her own in the kitchen garden before her mother arrives home again.

Holdsworth picks up strength during his week in the country and helps Phillis with her
studies. He takes to the family and they take to him, although the minister sees a "want of
seriousness" in his character.

I can never quite forget that this is a woman author writing in a male first person. Does this
worry anyone else?

I suppose that he has to see Phillis as an angel, otherwise he might have impure thoughts,
but
wouldn't a young man have those anyway? If there are sensual touches it is not surprising. The
most real things I think are his worry about how tall he is, and his admiratio of
Holdsworth. He
has been sent away from home and seems to be managing very nicely, he sometimes sounds
adult and sometimes adolescent, which we would expect at his age, but to me he never sounds
quite real.

And Mr Holman is too good to be true. I am sorry we don't see more about that genius
inventor,
Paul's father.

Funny that Hardy has been mentioned on the list today, because I must say the second part
of Cousin Phillis really reminded me of his work in places, especially when
Holdsworth first sees
Phillis in the kitchen garden picking pea pods.

This passage reminded me of Alec feeding Tess strawberries when they first meet in
Tess of the
D'Urbervilles - in both books it seems as if there is a closeness between the young women
and nature in the growing fruits and plants surrounding them, which also suggests the sexual
element to their own natures.

I thought the peas passage sensuously suggested Holdsworth's instant attraction to Phillis
without stating it outright. It also moves well away from the initial suggestion of her as an angel
or ideal - what could be more down-to-earth than harvesting vegetables?

I especially enjoyed the mention of picking and shelling peas because this brought back
mouth-watering memories of eating fresh peas as a child.

I grew up in the Suffolk countryside, and my most typical memory of my grandmother, who
died a couple of years ago, is of her with a basin in front of her, shelling peas into it - just as
Gaskell's Phillis did a hundred years earlier!
I helped on occasion and have to admit that, just like Paul in the story, I ended up putting plenty
of the sweet raw peas into my mouth rather than waiting for them to be cooked.
Nowadays I eat frozen peas like just about everybody else - but, as I reach middle age, I'd insist
they don't taste the same as the fresh bright green peas of my childhood!

"When Phillis first appears, she is vividly described, in a passage
suggesting a painting, where the whiteness of her skin especially shine
out, lit up by the setting sun."

By contrast, when Trollope is "fond" of a woman, he describes her as
"brown". On a number of occasions his heroine is "brown" - whether brown
haired (perhaps making a more acceptable choice of words to describe what
we might now call "red hair"), or brown complexioned ...

I suspect the suggestion is probably brown-haired/ complexioned rather than
red-haired.

Your interesting comments overlap with a discussion we've just been having
over on another list, Victorian Fiction, where it's been pointed out that
red hair often tends to be described as "fair" in 19th-century fiction -
sometimes a character goes from fair/blond to red and then back again, eg Dr
John in Villette.

At the risk of offending redheads on the list (I'm married to a sandy-haired
man myself!) it seems this particular shade in 19th-century fiction is often
associated with rather dodgy/ untrustworthy characters - the unlikeable
Phoebe in Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret is described as "white-eyelashed"
which suggests that her supposedly fair hair is possibly in fact red.
And, of course, in Barchester Towers, the ghastly Obadiah Slope is also
red-haired.

This distrust of red hair could be one reason why Gaskell repeatedly
mentions Phillis' "dark eyelashes" - to tell us obliquely that her hair is
yellow-blonde rather than red-blonde.

However, I also get the feeling that "brown" complexions and dark lashes are
supposed to be sexier than pale skin and white lashes.

Sorry to be so far behind with these postings - I had intended to 'catch up'
when school broke up last week, but went down with a nasty food
poisoning/stomach virus which is still (hopefully) improving. So will write
this mail as a kind of 'catch all'!

Judy wrote:

"Sometimes I think we
read so many novels focusing on the gentry or the
county families that we forget how hard a life it is
for the small land-holder.
This is precisely why I love Gaskell so much - she tells us about the
'ordinary' lives of the 19th century which other novelists often omit.

Light seems to be an important element in this opening section (which I
find > an amazingly rich piece of writing), often focused on the figure of
Phillis

"When she first appears, Gaskell writes: 'The westering sun shone full upon
> her, and made a slanting stream of light into the room within.'"

The other description of Gaskell's that kept re-curring were the number of
corners each room the characters were presently in had. This is where my
lack of visual imagination really lets me down - the most I can 'play with'
is the 'picture' of a five sided (and therefore five-cornered) room where I
once lived. But is this some sort of metaphor for the either the many twists
and turns an individual follows through the 'rooms of his/her house' or is
it simply another instance of Gaskell showing 'ordinary life' - in that
rooms in 'ordinary dwellings' become sub-divided or extended as necessary
and thus less 'exact' as would be expected in 'gentle folks' dwellings?

Judy wrote:

" I have a feeling there are quite a few Victorian novels where the arrival
of the railways is an important theme - > but they don't come to mind at the
moment. Can anybody think of any?"

Middlemarch, Dombey and Son, Desperate Remedies
(Hardy). However what
Gaskell really achieves here is an illustration of the advent of the 'new'
technology - railways - against the age old ways of living. A scene such as
the one where the children cry over the spilt milk that they have just
collected will soon pass - and milk will be taken away on those trains and
redelivered elsewhere, for example. And the sort of countryside Gaskell
describes with the villages that are so isolated will also change, first by
the advent of the railways and then as we know by the advent of the motor
car. Holman talks about '50 miles away' as being a great way off - but when
two places 50 miles apart were joined by a railway line the 'time distance'
shrunk considerably, helping the country way of life to change too.

Just a quick word about the notion of red headed characters being judged
unreliable! Apparently tradition tells us (!) that Judas Iscariot was
red-headed and thus the sign of traitor was thereafter judged to be red
hair. In medieval times this could be a severe problem! And yes there is a
lot of red hair in my family! (But it passed me by, although since my hair
turned prematurely white I can now say I was whatever colour I wish to have
been!!)

I must admit that women writing as men (or vice versa, though that way round seems to be
rarer)
can set my hackles rising, but Gaskell's narrator in Phillis doesn't have this effect on
me... as,
say, the rather swaggering male narrator in George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life
does at times.
I think Paul's voice seems convincing, although it would be interesting to know whether men on
the list agree. Does anybody know whether Gaskell used any other male narrators? I can't think
of any off-hand, but I haven't read all her work.

It seems as if many Victorian women authors wrote in the first person as men on occasion,
not
only Gaskell and George Eliot but Charlotte Bronte in The Professor, Emily Bronte
in Wuthering Heights.. and I'm sure there are more but it's late in the evening and
I'm feeling sleepy!

The only male Victorian author I could think of who wrote in the first person as a woman was
Dickens in Bleak House, which you read on the list before I joined. Dickens also
included a
remarkable short narrative in the female first person in Little Dorrit (Miss Wade's
story), and
some of the sections of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone are told by women - but I
have a feeling it
was far rarer for men to write as women than the other way round.

Thank you very much Judy for taking the time to find those paintings I
mentioned. It was lovely to
see them again. I appreciate the time and effort you took.

I can't help but think of Virginia Woolf when the Angel of the House is
mentioned, as she wrote that
it was necessary to kill her off before she could write.

Paul's father's dismissal of Phillis' intellectual ability comes as quite a
surprise in the novella,
I thought. Like a warning of what the world thinks.

Angela

Judy answered Angela:

I thought so too, and found the men's humour at the expense of Phillis'
yearning to learn quite chilling - as Gaskell, who herself often had to
struggle to find any time to read and write amid the demands of children
etc, must surely have intended.

I was especially struck by this exchange in Part II:

"You see she's so clever - she's more like a man than a woman - she
knows
Latin and Greek."
"She'd forget 'em, if she'd a houseful of children," was my father's comment
on this.

As modern readers, we cringe at the insensitivity of this remark by Paul's
father - and I'd like to think that at least some Victorian readers would
have cringed too.
But, even as we wince, we recognise the harsh truth of the statement - that
a wife at that time, especially one running her own household without an
army of servants, almost certainly would have had no time for Latin and
Greek, or for anything much beyond the relentless domestic chores.

It's interesting that Phillis especially yearns after Latin and Greek and
the classics, which were regarded as very much a male preserve... making her
"more like a man than a woman".

I've just finished reading the massive tome The Madwoman in the Attic: The
Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M
Gilbert and Susan Gubar, which has a passage on how women were usually
barred from learning the classics - interestingly enough bringing us back to
your mention of Virginia Woolf.

Part of this long passage reads: <>

So it seems that, by trying to learn Latin and Greek, Phillis is trying to
make a quiet rebellion against the expected role of angel in the house, and
strike out some kind of independent intellectual existence. Sadly, Mr
Manning's comment suggests just how heavily the odds are stacked against
her!

"I think Paul's voice seems convincing, although it would be interesting to
know whether men on the list agree."

Sounded convincing enough to me, but then Paul is only 17 or 18 years old and
it doesn't take all that much to speak like a 17 or 18 year old boy. I
recently read Anne Bronte's Tennant of Wildfell Hall where she takes on the
voice of Gilbert Markham and does a journeyman's job of it. EXCEPT for the
very end of the reconciliation chapter when two men start making promises to
each other in private. It got so touchy-feely I felt like spitting. Didn't
Anne know of Jane's dicta?

Richard C. Mintz

To Trollope-l

July 29, 2000

Re: Cousin Phillis: Reinforcing a Limiting Stereotype

Here I am to play devil's advocate. First let me say how much I
am enjoying Phillis lest what the rest of this posting contains
may seem to suggest I don't like the book. I do. I do.

I am drawn to Judy's comparison of Phillis with what Gaskell
had written of the Brontes. Novelists take their materials from
real life; they bear witness. While there was a genuine "Italian"
literature movement among the Victorians, the paradigm here
is one which does not disturb the notion that woman's first
-- and also if necessary last -- duty is to be a wife, mother,
housekeeper. The Italian movement: it began in Liverpool;
it was centered on the Roscoes, the husband writing a biography
of Leo (Medici pope), and the wife writing one of Vitttoria Colonna;
the pre-Raphaelites picked it up; the illustrator Gustave Dore;
it ended up centered on Dante and Petrarch insofar as the
literary aspect of it goes. One of Margaret Oliphant's most
powerful ghost stories tells of her soul's journey through an
afterlife as fearful and imitative of Dante's. The Victorians
(intellectual ones) were taken up by the Risorgimento. Think
of Clough' Amour de Voyage and EBB's Casa Guidi
Windows. Nonetheless, what we are to admire is Phillis's
ability to be sure and peel apples, boil potatoes. Remember
her mother's comment about what marriage will do to her.

It was this kind of attitude that limited women's experience,
what the Brontes could write. Charlotte died of a miscarriage
(or maybe childbirth).

The male narrator has been brought up. In her Autobiography
Oliphant says that if a woman writer wanted her work to be
taken seriously, not just that of a 'lady novelist', she had before
the 1880s to have a male narrator. She says not until the
1880s did women as a group chose female novelists first.
Lady Audley's Secret has a male narrator. I know Charlotte
Bronte defies this -- as do other novelists. Yet if Oliphant is
right, and the male voice was the one imposed, we see here
Gaskell again reinforcing stereotypical and limited attitudes.

I have gotten to the end of Part III and see the calendar allows
me to talk of this part just a bit (due July 30th). A few
questions: were others surprised at the turn of events?
Phillis is not to be the lover of Paul, but Mr Holdsworth.
For my part it seemed right: I all along saw Paul as a choral
voice, not the center of the agon of the tale. The railway
and modern world certainly intervenes centrally now: it takes
the man away. This third part brings in a needed tension
and suspense. It also keeps us at a distance. This is essential
for the pastoral expressionism of the tale.

How beautiful is Gaskell's style. So lucid, graceful, simple,
controlled.

Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody

To Trollope-l

July 31, 2000

Re: Phillis: The Male Narrator

Just to say Gwyn's point that having a male allowed Gaskell
to have a character who could have experiences outside
the home and bring in the modern world (railways, engineering)
easily does not preclude Oliphant's argument that male
narrators were seen as more acceptable and gained more
respect and credibility from the Victorian reader than a female.
In fact the latter reality shows why the former attitudes
prevailed: males were seen as experiencing and knowing
more, as more objective.

On Charlotte's death: a tragedy linked to her being a female.
Today she would have lived.
Ellen Moody

In response to Judy, to be accurate we would have to say that
female narrators go back to some of our earliest literary works.
Ovid's Heroides features female narrators: these are verse
epistles, letters written by women to men who have for one
reason for another left them. Ovid's verse epistles form
the prototype for later epistolary novels, among the earliest
of the European ones after the Renaissance is titled something
like Five Love Letters from a Nun to a Cavalier. He has
deserted her, and she begs him to return. The letters rehearse
the whole of her trauma. Stories told from the first and
third person point of view with a woman at the center go back
at least to the later 17th century. A very great one, still
powerful, is Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves.
If you haven't read it, you are in for a extraorindary
experience. It's Anna Karenina in little.

However, Margaret Oliphant was right to say that if a writer
wanted his or her book to be respected, what was asked was
a male narrator. The above traditions I have highlighted
are all erotic stories: most of these were derided or
castigated as immoral, though they were very popular and
some of them very great literary works. We might say that
by keeping Phillis's private thoughts from us, Oliphant
precludes a story which would show a woman's sexuality openly.
Austen did not become an establishment author respected
by all until later in the 19th century; Jane Eyre still
remains in many eyes 'a book for girl's, a romance' and
of course therefore inferior. Gaskell wanted her books
to compete with the likes of Thackeray. This is not to say
she doesn't have novels centered on a woman's point of
view: she certainly does. All Oliphant meant was that
there was pressure to have a male at the center of your
story even if you were a female writer and we can find a
male at the center of many a novel by a woman where we
feel a strain, do not quite believe the voice, and might
have enjoyed the female perspective. I would say that
Cranford is sophisticated in its approach and blends
numbers of perspectives. It's a little gem -- or series
of gems.

Paul spends a week's holiday at home with his family, and it is mentioned in passing that he
meets the girl who later becomes his wife.
When he returns to work, he and Holdsworth move their headquarters to Hornby, to help
complete the railway line at that end. This means they are able to visit Hope Farm more often,
usually going over for an hour or two in the early evening.

One day Holdsworth goes ahead and Paul follows on about an hour later. He discovers that
Holdsworth is helping the rest to get the hay in before it starts to rain. Paul joins the others just
minutes before the storm starts. When the storm breaks out, Holdsworth protectively wraps his
coat round Phillis, getting soaked himself. He seems to be teasing Phillis later and Paul notices
her blushing.

During harvest-time, Holdsworth sketches Phillis, but she suddenly leaves the room when
he
asks her to look at him so he can draw her eyes.

Later in the year, at the great apple-gathering, Phillis offers a nosegay to Holdsworth, and
Paul
sees an unmistakable look of love in his eyes.
But that very evening, when the two young men arrive back at their lodgings, Holdsworth
receives a letter with an offer for him to travel out to Canada and supervise the building of a rail
line there. There is no time to lose because a rival line is being threatened, so Holdsworth packs
his bags immediately and leaves that very night, to catch the next steamer.
Before he goes, he confides in Paul that he loves Phillis, and hopes to come back in two years
and make her his wife.

Paul goes to Hope Farm and breaks the news that Holdsworth is gone. Phillis is clearly
upset but
says nothing. He later tells the family that Holdsworth has arrived safely in Canada.
Paul's new boss works him hard, but, at Christmas, he is able to get away and visit Hope Farm
again. He gets to the chapel late and hears neighbours talking about how ill Phillis looks. He
sees
that she looks pale and thin, and later, back at the farm, he finds her crying in the kitchen. Paul
realises that she loves Holdsworth and is pining away for him, but, when he tries to sympathise,
she runs outside into the cold.

Paul follows Phillis outside and tells her she must look after her health for Holdsworth's
sake. He
reveals that Holdsworth has told him he loves Phillis and hopes to marry her. She looks
overjoyed at his words, but says they must not talk about it again.

It's struck me that, in Part II of Cousin Phillis, the incident where Phillis is
reading while doing
housework is strikingly reminiscent of a passage in Gaskell's Life of Charlotte
Bronte, which we
recently read over on Victorian Fiction. The biography tells of Emily Bronte doing exactly the
same thing... though she was studying German, while Phillis is seen trying to master Italian.

The passage in Phillis runs:

"a waft of air from some unseen source, slightly opened the door of communication
with the
kitchen, that Phillis must have left unfastened, and I saw part of her figure as she sate by the
dresser, peeling apples with quick dexterity of finger, but with repeated turnings of her head over
some book lying on the dresser by her. I softly rose, and as softly went into the kitchen, and
looked over her shoulder; before she was aware of my neighbourhood. I had seen that the book
was in a language unfamiliar to me, and the running title was L'Inferno."

This is the similar passage in the Life of Charlotte Bronte, Chapter VIII::

"When at home, she took the principal part of the cooking upon herself, and did all
the
household ironing; and after Tabby grew old and infirm, it was Emily who made all the bread for
the family; and any one passing by the kitchen-door, might have seen her studying German out
of an open book, propped up before her, as she kneaded the dough; but no study, however
interesting, interfered with the goodness of the bread, which was always light and
excellent."

The similarities here are so striking (passing by the kitchen-door, learning a language from
a
book, and the way in which the young woman in each case does her work with skill despite
reading at the same time) that I feel Gaskell must have been thinking of the Brontes while
describing Phillis at this point.

The next few lines in the Life run:

"Books were, indeed, a very common sight in that kitchen; the girls were taught by
their father
theoretically, and by their aunt practically, that to take an active part in all household work was,
in their position, woman's simple duty; but, in their careful employment of time, they found many
an odd five minutes for reading while watching the cakes, and managed the union of two kinds of
employment better than King Alfred."

Again, this is strikingly similar to Phillis, who speaks longingly of finding time to read amid
all her
chores, and can't quite understand how Paul can fail to share her passion for books.
Although Phillis is so beautiful and the Bronte sisters were famously plain (or Charlotte
considered herself so, anyway), this has set me wondering if the young heroine's isolated
existence, with an eccentric clergyman for a father, might partly be inspired by the Brontes.

Cheers,
Judy Geater
who sadly finds it impossible to peel apples while reading, or make bread even when not
reading!;-)

From Dagny:

This sounds to me as if Rev. Holman and his family do
not approve of travel on Sunday. Ironic that their
cousin is part of the building of the new railroad.

The first time I heard of this ban on Sunday travel
was in one of the early Trollope Barset books, from
Mrs. Proudy, I believe it was. Quite a lengthy tirade.

Thank you, Ellen, for all the interesting information on the "Italian"
literature movement. I had been wondering why Phillis was shown as being so
keen to learn the language. It also seems a clever way of showing up the
old/new division between her father, an admirer of Latin classics like
Virgil, and Holdsworth, who speaks colloquial Italian. What's more, he even
advises her to turn away from Dante and read an Italian novel!
Does anybody know if these were as scandalous as French novels?
Somehow, I can't imagine that Holdsworth would have chosen anything likely
to offend, but a footnote in the Penguin edition of "Phillis" suggests that
novels in general would have won the disapproval of deeply religious people
like the Holmans.

I have been thinking over your comment "Nonetheless, what we are to admire
is Phillis's
ability to be sure and peel apples, boil potatoes. Remember
her mother's comment about what marriage will do to her."

This is very true. It seems as if intellectual women in Victorian times,
both characters in novels and people in real life, were always under that
pressure to be the perfect daughter, wife or mother, and immerse themselves
in domestic life, while somehow doing their reading and writing in the odd
stolen moment, without drawing attention to it.
Gaskell's own letters (I've only read a few but would love to read more)
show just how frantically busy she herself was, running a household and
looking after her daughters, putting up a succession of visitors, trying to
be the perfect minister's wife with Sunday schools etc, and still somewhere
amid all this finding the time and space to write her novels and stories.
She sometimes ended up writing in the living room amid all the family -
hardly ideal!

It seems as if in a sense Phillis is playing Mary to her mother's Martha.
She is seen as more an intellectual partner to her father than her mother
is, and has the relative freedom to try to learn Latin and Italian - though
learning them out of books is a painful process.

She partly fulfils the role of a son as well as a daughter (perhaps a son
who died - early on in the story there is a moving reference to other
children who did not survive).

But, as she eagerly reads and learns, she is also learning other lessons
from her mother, about the importance of a spotless, scrubbed white dresser
and food on the table. This, rather than her father's role as farmer and
priest, will in fact be her future.

However... as well as reinforcing that female stereotype on one level, I
also feel Gaskell is questioning it on another, by the very act of
highlighting the hunger of her heroine for education.

It's interesting that Phillis is attracted to the man who helps her with her
reading (Holdsworth) and not to Paul, the younger brother type who regards
books as boring.

This reminded me of Gaskell's last novel, "Wives and Daughters," where Molly
grows closer to Roger as he picks out books for her to read, and involves
her in his scientific studies of insects and nature.

In Wives and Daughters, early in the novel, Roger tells Molly she will find
her fulfilment in living for others rather than for herself - the typical
Victorian view of a woman's role. But she protests:

"No I shan't!" said Molly, shaking her head. "It will be very dull when I
shall have killed myself, as it were, and live only in trying to do and to
be, as other people like. I don't see any end to it. I might as well never
have lived."

Yet, despite this powerful cry from the heart, as the book progresses Molly
does indeed start to think and live through others. So Gaskell is
passionately querying the limiting stereotype on the one hand, yet accepting
it as a reality on the other.

Bye for now,
Judy Geater

Subject: Re: [trollope-l] Cousin Phillis: Angels & pictures

Dear Judy and all co Cousin Phillis readers

"But, even as we wince, we recognise the harsh truth of the statement -
that
a wife at that time, especially one running her own household without an army of servants,
almost certainly would have had no time for Latin and
Greek, or for anything much beyond the relentless domestic chores."

While obviously the same thought occured to me, I couldn't help thinking too
of all the 'ordinary' working men and women who would not have had any
opportunity for learning anything beyond the rudimentary 'essentials'.
Phillis makes the point to Paul that even for her father, the minister, to
have anytime for 'things' outside his farm duties he has to get up at 3
0'clock in the morning. We know that house servants, even if able to read
and write, had to get up before their masters in the morning and often did
not go to bed until after them in the evenings. Even the most ordinary
'Angel in the House' would have had a 'drudge' to assist in the 'angelic
duties' (cleaning their own version of the glass ceiling, perhaps?)

Judy wrote:

" It's interesting that Phillis especially yearns after Latin and Greek and
the classics, which were regarded as very much a male preserve... making
her
"more like a man than a woman".

Again, here we see that education can be subversive - here it would make
Phillis as 'powerful' as a man, and educating a poorer worker could make
him/her as knowledgable, and therefore as 'powerful' as his/her master. This
is the point the Hardy makes in several of his books, especially Jude the
Obscure

"It was this kind of attitude that limited women's experience,
what the Brontes could write. Charlotte died of a miscarriage
(or maybe childbirth)."

I have the kind of mind that remembers useless trivia and completely
forgets to cook dinner. So please don't think I am 'showing off' when I tell
you that Charlotte died of a rare complication of pregnancy (which has a
long name which I *have* forgotten!) which is basically early morning
sickness taken to extremes - the sufferer cannot keep anything 'down',
dehydrates and, without medical intervention, dies. Nowadays such unlucky
women are taken into hospital and given intravenous drips etc until
hopefully the 'phase' passes and 'nromal' pregnancy conditions prevail -
although for some poor women the condition can last for the whole nine
months. When I was taking my degree one of my fellow students was afflicted
in this way, and wasn't at all cheered up by my telling her that was how CB
died!

The male narrator has been brought up. In her Autobiography
Oliphant says that if a woman writer wanted her work to be
taken seriously, not just that of a 'lady novelist', she had before
the 1880s to have a male narrator. She says not until the
1880s did women as a group chose female novelists first.
Lady Audley's Secret has a male narrator. I know Charlotte
Bronte defies this -- as do other novelists. Yet if Oliphant is
right, and the male voice was the one imposed, we see here
Gaskell again reinforcing stereotypical and limited attitudes.

I don't really agree that this is why EG uses a male narrator in this
instance. Phillis is being 'examined' and described by someone who is
initially a stranger to her - and I think that EG makes this stranger male
for several relevant reasons. An unaccompanied 'respectable' female would
not be travelling around the countryside at this time, and furthermore would
not have been welcomed in the same way as the Holman's greet Paul - who
arrives without prior warning. Presumably Paul, as a male, would also view
Phillis in a different light to another woman - once it has been established
that Paul looks on Phillis as a 'sister' and therefore without
sexual/romantic connotations, he can 'observe' her without any
'complications' of rivalry that may exist between two women! Paul's
'traditional' male education shows as an inadequate contrast to the real
knowledge and natural awareness that Phillis exhibits - Paul's father
emphasises this when he says 'Thou'rt no great shakes, I know, in th'
inventing line; but many a one gets on better without having fancies for
something he does not see and never has seen' yet he dismisses Phillis'
learning as being forgettable once 'she'd a houseful of children'.

I have gotten to the end of Part III and see the calendar allows
me to talk of this part just a bit (due July 30th). A few
questions: were others surprised at the turn of events?
Phillis is not to be the lover of Paul, but Mr Holdsworth.

I think this shows how experienced a writer EG was by this time - she had
managed to lay a false trail (a little bit like the way the railway track
kept 'shifting' on the marshy land?) By this time in the novel too we
realise that Paul is a 'reliable narrator' - he describes Phillis, not as a
lovelorn 'swain' as it appeared possible in the opening stages, but as an
observor who admires both 'parties' (Phillis and Holdsworth) in the
'budding' romance and wishes them both well.

I was very interested in all the comments from Ellen and Gwyn about the use
of the male narrator in Cousin Phillis.
It struck me that Gaskell does use a female narrator in Cranford - I suppose
a male character would not be able to befriend the ladies and enter into
their way of life. But I have a feeling that in most of her novels and
stories the sex of the narrator is unspecified.

I hadn't quite realised that women were under pressure to use male narrators
in order to be taken seriously. This possibly explains the infuriating male
narrator in George Eliot's otherwise wonderful Scenes of Clerical Life, who
keeps intruding into the action to make superior comments and lord it over
the women at the centre of the stories.

In her later novels, I believe her narrators become sexless, although of
course she herself as author was writing under a man's name.

Does anybody know who was the *first* woman author to use a female narrator?
I think I'm right in saying that Jane Austen never gives a hint of the
narrator's sex - but I'm sure Ellen or one of the other Austen experts on
the list will be able to tell me if I'm wrong!

Apart from Austen I must confess that I haven't read all that many 18th/
early 19th-century novels, though I did just recently read Anne Radcliffe's
Mysteries of Udolpho as background to Northanger Abbey - from
memory, I
believe that again the narrator's sex wasn't mentioned.

However, I know that some of the epistolary novels by men are largely told
by the heroines, and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is written as her
autobiography.
So is it the case that men had the freedom to write in the female first
person before women could do so? If so, how ironic!

Greetings from a long-time lurker--
In scanning yesterday's digest, I noticed the thread re: female authors
employing female narrators. Aphra Behn's *Oroonoko* (1688) is the first
such case that pops to my mind.

Alison Case's recent book *Plotting Women: Gender and Narration in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century British Novel* (U Virginia P, 2000)
affords a critically astute look at the gendering of narration from *Moll
Flanders* and *Pamela* forward to *Dracula,* hitting works like *Jane
Eyre,* *Bleak House,* and *Aurora Leigh* along the way. It's especially
illuminating when it takes on the gendered, "competing" narrators of
*Dracula* and *The Woman in White.* I heartily recommend it to those who
are interested in further considering the way authors of both sexes
gendered--and then treated--their narrators in the 18th and 19th centuries.

On another note, did anyone ever start the Palliser subgroup?

Sarah Heidt
Cornell University Department of English

To which Judy replied:

Thank you for this. I have seen several mentions of Aphra Behn recently but
have never read any of her work... I'll have to add her to the ever-swelling
TBR pile.

Alison Case's book sounds well worth tracking down if at all possible...
wonder if any local library has it? I have recently read Aurora Leigh so
would be especially interested to see her discussion of this, while Jane
Eyre and Bleak House are two of my life-long favourites, which I have
returned to again and again over the years.

Many thanks also to Zubair and Ellen for all the fascinating information on
female narrators. I'm pleased to see that some women did write in a female
voice so early on, but what a pity they so often needed to adopt a male
persona in order to be taken seriously.

Bringing this back to Phillis, since reading Ellen's post I've been
wondering how different Cousin Phillis would be if we saw events through
the heroine's eyes. I suppose we would lose the distance and nostalgic
quality which are so important to the story, but it is still an interesting
thought.

Along with Judy's observation that Phillis' sensuality is displayed in the
garden scene, I'll add a couple more from parts II and III: Holdsworth
draws her as a Ceres, an earth goddess, in pt III and there's also this
quote from pt II:

"Phyllis left off wearing the pinafores that had always been so obnoxious to
me.... And the blue cotton gown became a brown stuff one as winter drew on;
this sounds like some book I once read, in which a migration from the blue
bed to the brown was spoken of as a great family event."

No coincidence that Phillis' clothing and a bed are spoken of so closely
together? There's also her "pretty mouth" which catches Holdsworth's
attention when Paul and his father are talking about her.

If the constraints of her life bother Phillis she doesn't say it directly,
or say much at all about her responses or subjective experience. (She
*does* blush a lot, though!) I had thought that "show don't tell" is a
20th-century invention. Gaskell uses her first-person, relatively
uninvolved narrator (the chorus as Ellen described him) to deliver her
messages about Victorian womanhood, and the expectations set on it, subtly.

Gaskell's descriptive language has been mentioned already; I also think it's
quite beautiful. Very striking to me is how carefully attuned to nature and
the seasons the story is. The rushed hay-gathering before a rain, the frost
and snow, the apples crowding the house, all so wonderfully idyllic and
absorbing. It makes me want to visit! Urbanite Holdsworth is healed by
this environment but also disturbs his hosts, Phillis in particular! I do
not have a good idea of the other settings of the book, with the possible
exception of Paul's little apartment which is described early in the story.

I am anxious to see how Phillis and Holdworth's story ends! :) On to pt IV.

Glad to hear it! I haven't read *all* of Gaskell by any means, but am
definitely a fan, as you might just have guessed by now.;-)
Wives and Daughters is a wonderful novel, in particular. I have also just
borrowed a collection of EG's supernatural and ghost stories from the
library, with the tempting title "Curious, If True," and am looking forward
to them.

Thanks, Beth, for all your comments about places where Phillis's sensuality
is suggested - the earth goddess is certainly quite a contrast with the
Angel in the House image, and I agree with you that the descriptive language
is beautiful:

"Very striking to me is how carefully attuned to nature and
the seasons the story is. The rushed hay-gathering before a rain, the
frost and snow, the apples crowding the house, all so wonderfully idyllic and
absorbing. It makes me want to visit!"

This rhythm of the seasons running through the story also struck me. It
seems to look forward to Hardy's novels like Far from the Madding Crowd and
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, where the farming year is so closely bound up
with the lives and passions of the main characters.

It's interesting that Phillis is linked with apples more than once - she is
peeling apples when she is reading in the kitchen, and later Paul sees
Holdsworth looking at her with an expression of unmistakable love at the
"great apple-gathering".

Ever since Genesis (if not before!), apples have had a close link with
sexuality, so I must admit that when I reached this point in the story I was
fully expecting Holdsworth to seduce Phillis... only to have my expectations
confounded.

I think by this stage Gaskell has dropped a number of hints that Holdsworth
will be a seducer - those moustaches, and his telltale knowledge of France
and Italy, not forgetting those wicked novels.

Yet, when the moment comes, he only seduces Phillis on a spiritual/mental
level, by gazing into her eyes for that moment and letting her glimpse his
love.

In this novella, I think Gaskell often tempts us to expect a predictable
outcome - for instance, we originally assume that Paul will fall in love
with Phillis, and that Phillis herself will be the usual self-effacing and
meek heroine, only to be proved wrong on both counts.
She does it again here with Holdsworth, as we prepare to see him turn into
the stereotyped seducer - only to discover that in fact he is a hard-working
young man with honourable intentions, who is heading off to Canada in the
line of duty.

However... the effect on Phillis toward the end of Part III is as serious as
it would be if she had actually been seduced. She has still given her heart,
and is devastated when the man she loves travels to the other side of the
world without even stopping to say goodbye.

I agree wholeheartedly--the farm sounds wonderful. The whole tone of the
farm sequences is already nostalgic, I think,--- for the "modern young men"
of science and technology busily helping to end the rural paradise with
their railways. It sounds so peaceful and idyllic I wish I could wake up
there for just one day.

I also find this story to be more of a page turner than most nineteenth c
novels I've read--I usually don't read particularly to find out what's going
to happen--usually I feel I know. But in this book I'm surprised.
Actually, the same with Diana of the Crossways --
though that I have to read more slowly so I
can follow what's going on. I plan to reread Cousin Phillis since I feel
I'm reading too fast to enjoy the language as much as I want to.

"However... the effect on Phillis toward the end of Part III is as serious
as it would be if she had actually been seduced. She has still given her
heart, and is devastated when the man she loves travels to the other side of the
world without even stopping to say goodbye."

Surely Gaskell here shows that Phyllis's affections have been 'seduced' and
is illustrating that love 'given away' can be as devasting as giving away
virginity. What Phyllis has 'given' to Holdsworth - her heart - is as
precious a commodity as anything else to her, and also shows her innocence
and naivete. This reflects 'Ruth' - although Ruth 'gave away' her virginity,
the biggest initial shock of her abandonment by her seducer was the fact of
the 'failure' of his promises of love. But it is obvious that 'Cousin
Phillis' is a more mature work of Gaskell's than 'Ruth' because (allowing
for the short story/novella format), Mrs G manages to get these feelings
across in a more 'economical' style. Phyllis's innocence and naivete are due
to her religious upbringing, and the fact that her parents seem unaware that
their only child is approaching adulthood (and this still happens!) but also
are a metaphor for the country/pastoral life versus town/new technology. But
the countryside is not shown as totally idyllic and the some of the
'country' characters are flawed - the mischievous children with the over
strict mother, the intellectually challenged Tim - who however ultimately
redeems himself with his concern for Phyllis.

I too am glad that so many 'new' readers of Mrs G are enjoying this reading.
I have a seriously 'soft spot' for her - and I know I have said on other
lists when we have been discussing her work, that to me one of the important
aspects of her writing are the social histories of the time that she
illuminates. I have heard Cranford criticised because it deals with the
minutiae of every day life - but these 'minutiea' are not dealt with by many
other Victorian writers and would be lost without Mrs G's 'intervention'.

This is to concur with Judy Warner's remarks. This is my
second reading of Cousin Phillis and while I didn't remember
some of the details too exactly, I remembered the story in
general sufficiently to turn this reading into a second reading.
The second reading of a book is often so much richer and
more rewarding than the first. You notice so much more
than you did the first time round.

Probably also because I have been reading Gaskell's ghost
stories and most recently read Cranford I have
become aware how expressionist her techniques
are. What she explores are attitudes of mind and how these
arise from one's social circumstances, background and also
the real physical surroundings one grows up in. This latter
aspect of her fiction aligns her to Hardy, though the
actual mood of the two authors often differs. Hardy is
pessimistic, atavistic, archaic while in Cousin Phillis
and Cranford Gaskell writes nostalgic if fractured pastoral.
Her ghost stories, though, tell another kind of tale, one
frightening and one far more explorative of the harms and
irretrievable mean acts people are driven to afflict one
another with. As both editors to the two different volumes
of ghost stories I've seen say, paradoxically in Gaskell's
ghost stories she explores the oppression of women more
frankly and graphically than she does in her realistic
fiction. She attempted this in Ruth without the disguise
as it were of the metaphysical; in stories like 'The
Old Nurse's Tale' and 'The Grey Woman' she got away with
it.

It is said that the common reader always goes for a longer
novel or novella and short stories aren't read anymore.
Probably this is partly the result of there being no easy
venue for the publication of such texts. TV has replaced
most good magazines which used to carry good short stories.
If an author wants to use this form, he or she has to establish
a reputation as a longer novelist first. Then collections
of short stories can appear in book form. This is a shame
for literary lists on which these book reads go on. A
short story is so much less taxing, so much less a
formidable undertaking. You would naturally read the story
inside the single week so could talk about them as a
whole intelligently each week. On Gaslights short story
reading is practiced; there there is an angelic listowner
and some saintly listmembers who work together to put these
stories on the Net. They are not always easy to find.

I see no one has picked up on my response to Sarah about a
Palliser series subgroup read. Still I here offer another
one: a subgroup to be made up of short stories by Victorian
writers. There are numbers of anthologies of ghost,
detective and other Victorian stories. There are two collections
made up of Gaskell's; I know of a couple made up of Margaret
Oliphant's. On this list we did Trollope's short stories
about 2 years ago and it was a highly successful group read
for some of the reasons I outlined above.

After being struck by similarity between Phillis learning Italian while peeling apples and Emily
Bronte learning German while reading, I've noticed some more similarities with the Brontes' lives
in Cousin Phillis.

The minister seems to be more good-humoured than Patrick Bronte - somehow, you can't
imagine him wandering round with a loaded gun, as the Brontes' father did according to a
passage in the first edition of Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. (I think this was
deleted from the later editions because Mr Bronte felt it gave the wrong idea!)

But, like Patrick Bronte, Holman is unusual in wanting to encourage his daughter to learn as
much as possible, and dip into the usually "masculine" world of the intellect.
He is also similar to Mr Bronte in his fear of colour and ornament - something I suppose both the
fictional character and real man shared with many other Victorian clergy, especially low church
and non-conformist ministers.

In another passage from the Life of Charlotte Bronte which I believe was again
deleted from later
editions, Gaskell describes how Mr Bronte was horrified when his children were given coloured
boots, which he considered unsuitable - and threw the boots into the fire.
Holman doesn't go to these extremes, but there is a passage in Part II where he complains about
women putting on their "ribbons and gauds" and says: "Phillis, I am thankful thou dost not care
for the vanities of dress."
When Phillis confesses "I often wish I could wear pretty-coloured ribbons round my neck like the
squire's daughters," he rebukes her.

"The love of ornament is a temptation and a snare," said he gravely. "The
true adornment is a meek and quiet spirit."

Here, colour and beauty seem to be linked not only with a woman's budding sexuality, but
also with self-assertion - Phillis must avoid ribbons and finery in order to stay "meek and quiet".
There is the same sort of feeling in Charlotte Bronte's Villette where Lucy Snowe
(with her colourless name) is so horrified by being given a pink dress, and tries to insist on
wearing grey.

Getting back to the passage from Cousin Phillis, immediately after warning his
daughter against the "love of ornament," Homan starts to reproach himself - and comes up with
the strange request to his wife "could we not sleep in the grey room, instead of our own?"
He wants to sleep in the grey room because it means he will not have to see the farmworker
Timothy Cooper in the yard outside. Seeing him doing his work in a slovenly fashion has often
upset Holman,and he has repeatedly cut his own chin while shaving through anger.
Holman is turning his violence in on himself - but is afraid that he may turn it outwards unless he
seeks the sanctuary of the "grey room".

Of course, he wants to move because of the room's location, but the word grey seems very
suggestive here. It seems to be the opposite of the "red room" in Jane Eyre, where Jane is put
by her aunt as a punishment, and where the colour red is linked with anger.

Paul visits the Holman family again at Easter, and hears people in the chapel talking about
Phillis' blooming appearance, by sharp contrast with Christmas. He is pleased to see her looking
well, but feels uneasy about breaking Holdsworth's confidence.

Paul becomes even more concerned when he receives a letter from Holdsworth in Canada
saying that he has become friendly with the Ventadour family, and Lucille, the second daughter,
reminds him of Phillis. This letter gives him a "presentiment" which he cannot drive out of his
mind.

The railway lines are now completed and Paul is preparing to go home to Birmingham, to
join
his father's business, when he receives another letter from Canada, revealing that Holdsworth is
now married to Lucille. He is agonised by the thought of how to break the news to Phillis, and
goes off walking over the moors.

He goes back into the house and shows the letter to Phillis, who tries to bear the news well
and says she hopes Holdsworth will be happy. However, over the coming days, she seems
increasingly unhappy, and Betty tells Paul "I'd as lief Holdsworth had never come near us". A
few days later cards arrive informing the family of his marriage. Paul blames himself more and
more for ever telling Phillis that Holdsworth loved her.

The minister seems troubled and turns Timothy Cooper away after he kills an apple-tree. He
later asks Paul to talk to him in private, and says he suspects that Holdsworth has "played tricks
on Phillis". Paul says he knows that Holdsworth never spoke of love to Phillis, but reveals that he
himself told her Edward loved her. The minister is very angry, but Phillis herself comes in and
explains that Paul only told her because he saw how unhappy she was.
She confesses her own love, and collapses with brain fever.

Phillis starts to make a slow recovery, but Brother Robinson and another local minister are
extremely unhelpful to her father, accusing him of making "an idol of your daughter".
By contrast, Paul discovers that Timothy, the sacked worker, is spending all day keeping the
carts away from the road to avoid disturbing Phillis' sickbed. He tells the minister, and Tim gets
his old job back.

Phillis recovers, and asks Paul if she can go to stay with his parents for a few weeks. In the
final words of the story, she expresses her wish to go back to the "peace of the old days".

Several people have commented on how beautifully and poetically Cousin
Phillis is
constructed, with all the main themes worked so economically into such a small space.

So it comes as something of a surprise to realise that, in fact, the ending we have is not the
one
Gaskell originally intended.
As Jenny Uglow's fascinating biography Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories
explains (a book I
really can't recommend enough), she originally wanted the story to be longer, and at one stage
thought she would have to make it even shorter. So she sketched out not one but two alternative
endings, as well as the one which was finally printed. Uglow writes:

Cousin Phillis has been called Gaskell's most 'perfect' story. It
feels as natural in form as in
content, its ending inevitable from its beginning. Disconcerting, then, but also exhilarating, that
an uncollected letter should reveal alternative endings, and show Gaskell less as a spontaneous
creator than as a harassed professional rapidly adjusting copy to deadlines.
The story appeared in the Cornhill from November 1863 to February 1864. On 10
December,
she still had not written the ending. She had received the impression that Smith wanted the story
to finish with the year, which would take it only to Holdsworth's departure. Although this would be
a pity, 'since it is such a complete fragment', she was prepared to concede. In a rapid, sprawling
script she dashed off two pages as a make-do conclusion. They deal with Holdsworth's marriage
in a single sentence and then simply give up in despair:

"I had to tell Phillis this - I cannot bear to think of the piteous scene; all the more piteous
because she was so patient. Spare me the recital.'

George Smith spared Paul - and the reader.

In the same letter, still in the person of Paul, Gaskell sketched the ending she had originally
planned, never written because Smith would allow her only four more issues. Her story, she said,
had 'a sort of moral, "Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all"... It was a
story of growth through feeling. The last scenes would be set years later, after Holman had died.
Paul, now married, returns to find Heathbridge struck by typhus and comes across Phillis using
Holdsworth's old technical sketches to help her drain the marshy land. An independent single
woman, working in harmony with the 'common labourers', she unites male knowledge with
female love: Paul finds her with an orphaned child in her arms, 'and another pulling at her gown'
- we learn afterwards that she has adopted them. If George Smith's guillotine had not come
down, Cousin Phillis would not have ended at that poignant moment of poise, but
would have circled back to a constant motif of Gaskell's fiction, filling the empty heart and hearth
with the children of others."

Needless to say, I'm now desperate to read this whole letter and be able to compare the
three endings in Gaskell's own words! What a shame the text of this intriguing letter isn't printed
as an appendix to my copy of Phillis - is anybody else lucky enough to have it? I
suppose as it is "uncollected" probably very few people have seen it.

I'm certainly glad that Gaskell wasn't forced to cut the story off halfway, but, reading this
summary, it seems rather a shame that she couldn't go on and write the ending Uglow describes.
As an independent single woman, she could have been like the next generation of the women
described so lovingly in Cranford - with greater freedom to create a full life for
herself. It would have also been very fitting to see her working the land as a woman farmer,
using the expertise she has learned from her father. With children at her feet, she would have
combined the male and female worlds which come into such uneasy juxtaposition in the story.

And yet... the ending we have is so beautiful, I can't very well wish for anything else!
Beautiful, but very sad. Despite Phillis' attempt to be brave, I think we are all too well aware that
she will never be able to get back to "the peace of the old days," any more than the railway track
whichher beloved laid across the countryside can be ripped up and forgotten.

First off, I'd just like to welcome all the newcomers who have posted their introductions. I
enjoyed your post about your liking for Gaskell, Richard, and I think you will be pleasantly
surprised if you try some Trollope, too! I'm currently reading "Doctor Thorne" which is wonderful
and full of that lovely wit.

To return to Cousin Phillis, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Phillis is linked with
apples more than once - when she is peeling them while reading, and then again when she and
Holdsworth draw closer at the great apple-gathering, where he looks at her with an expression of
love for the first time.

In Part IV, I was quite surprised to see that apples crop up again, and very strikingly. When
the minister is beside himself with worry over Phillis, and starting to suspect that Holdsworth has
somehow played her false, he takes out his anger on the clumsy farm-worker Timothy Cooper.
Cooper is dismissed because he has killed an apple tree.

Holman tells his wife: "He has killed the Ribstone pippin at the corner of the orchard; gone
and
piled the quicklime for the mortar for the new stable wall against the trunk of the tree - stupid
fellow! killed the tree outright - and it loaded with apples!"

Of course, his real anger is not so much with the bumbling Tim as with the young man who
he fears has broken his daughter's heart and health - struck her down just when she, too, is full of
youth and beauty, and potential fruitfulness, like the tree "loaded with apples".
The link between apples and sexuality (despite my mistake about Genesis, Beth!;-)) is present
again here, but the apples also have a special personal significance for Phillis, who, as we
guess, is reminded of that apple-gathering. Paul says that this conversation seems to take the
spirit out of Phillis - and no wonder.

Earlier in our discussion, I mentioned that Gaskell several times creates certain expectations
only to confound them - for instance, she describes Phillis initially almost as you might describe
an angel in a picture, catching a shaft of light, but quickly shows that this is a flesh and blood
woman with a passion for Greek and Latin books and a very unangelic sense of humour.
Again, she leads us to suspect that Holdsworth will be the traditional seducer - but instead shows
us a basically likeable young man, whose intentions are honourable, however much suffering he
causes in the end.

In this last section, I think our expectation and fear is that Phillis will die, just like that apple
tree.
There have been several hints of this - the distancing nostalgia, and the phrases like "I see her
now - cousin Phillis," which seem to freeze her in time.
The sad story which Paul's father tells him, about how he himself loved a 19-year-old girl who
died without ever knowing of his love, adds to the doomy feeling - as does the mention that
Phillis does not come from a long-lived family and her own aunt went into "a decline" and died.
So, when Phillis herself falls ill with "brain fever", that favourite Victorian killer, I think anyone
reading the story for the first time starts to fear the worst - but, once again, gloriously, Gaskell
confounds our expectations. Instead of yet another deathbed scene, she shows us a young
woman recovering, and, in the final lines, having to face the prospect of rebuilding her life
without the prospect of marriage.

Does anybody know exactly what brain fever was? It seems to crop up so many times in
Victorian novels, as indeed do other mysterious fevers, but I'm not at all clear about what these
diseases were. I don't think brain fever can have been meningitis, because it so often seems to
be a drawn-out illness.

The following link is to a page of definitions of
medical terms and diseases in old documents.

I also copied what they say about 'brain fever'
which they do connect with meningitis. It is
probably impossible to know what exactly is meant
by such terms in Victorian novels, but nutrition
and sanitation were at such a lower lever, and
people could become so run down, and immune
systems so much more easily compromised than is
common now in developed countries.I am still not
sure, from what they say, how prolonged the
illness could be.

Kristi

Ellen wrote in:

Re: Elizabeth Gaskell: Harassed Working Writer

I am fascinated by Judy's commentary on the original
plan for Cousin Phillis. I did think the ending was too
abrupt, too cut off, too sudden altogether. Judy will
probably know this from Uglow, but there are other
instances where Gaskell found herself having to change
her fiction to fit the demands of an editor or publisher
and their ideas about their perceived audience. Sometimes
she lost, but sometimes she won. For 'The Old Nurse's
Tale' Dickens wanted her to revise the ending so the
ghostly vision would not be seen; she argued with him
and refused to change it. As we read it today it feels
right to have such a theatrical close, but she had to
struggle against Dickens to keep it. Cranford also
represents a book that evolved and changed, not
always as a result of Gaskell's standards of artistry
or her vision of her content.

It was the rare writer who could ignore the demands
of the marketplace, and when they could, it was
often because their work suited that marketplace
without coercion. Dickens was such a writer: he
followed his own bent, but then his bent was in
line with the common reader of his day.

Betty has one a small part in the last section of
Cousin Phillis, but to me it is a very major one.

I was rather miffed at her when she laid into Paul,
rather rudely I thought:

"Not that you've got the gifts to do it, either;
you're no great shakes to look at, neither for
figure, nor yet for face, and it would need be a deaf
adder to be taken in wi' your words, though there may
be no great harm in em."

Although I have to confess to a chuckle at the deaf
adder bit, even while I was horrified that she was
saying it to him. But that's the way Betty is, telling
it like she sees it.

Her directness is vindicated when she approaches
Phillis in the same manner:

'Now, Phillis!' said she, coming up to the sofa; 'we
ha' done a' we can for you, and th' doctors has done
a' they can for you, and I think the Lord has done a'
He can for you, and more than you deserve, too, if
you don't do something for yourself. If I were you,
I'd rise up and snuff the moon, sooner than break
your father's and your mother's hearts wi' watching and
waiting till it pleases you to fight your Own way
back to cheerfulness. There, I never favoured long
preachings, and I've said my say.'

That is just what Phillis needed, the verbal
equivalent of a good shaking. I wonder what would have
happened had someone talked thusly to Lily Dale in The
Small House at Allington. I guess Hopkins would have
been the one to "shake" her.

Following our earlier discussion about how Phillis teaches herself Italian out of a book , I was
interested to find out from Sally Mitchell's book, Daily Life in Victorian England, that
apparently
many girls and women learned languages in this rather difficult way. (However, it doesn't say
whether they were peeling apples at the same time!)

Mitchell writes:

"The most thoroughly educated Victorian women were probably those who
had been taught by
their parents. A leisured father who was interested in instructing his daughter, a mother who
enjoyed intellectual pursuits, and a well-stocked home library provided a solid grounding in the
basics and a lifetime habit of independent learning. Educated women continued to pursue new
subjects throughout their adulthood. Studying languages was especially widespread. Many
women became thoroughly competent translators by spending an hour or two every day with a
dictionary, a grammar, and a substantial book written in another language."

Well, I imagine L'Inferno is a substantial book all right - although poor Phillis
doesn't have the
well-stocked home library, the intellectual mother or indeed the leisured father. She falls down on
all three, showing just what a struggle it is for her to find the time and space for reading and
learning.

As Gaskell has clearly chosen every detail in this novella with so much care, I'm sure that all
the
books mentioned have special significance - the Dante, Virgil's Georgics and the
Italian novel
which Holdsworth gives to Phillis, Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, our possible future
read.
Unfortunately I must admit I haven't read any of these, so can't come up with any very sensible
suggestions. My copy of Phillis says that the Georgics contain passages
on rural and agricultural
pursuits, making them relevant to Holman, and there is the rather corny point that Phillis reads
about hell with Holdsworth before he leads her to her own personal version of it. But I'd certainly
be interested to hear if anybody who has actually read any of these works has spotted deeper
links.

On brain fever, thanks very much to Kristi for the interesting link and information. I'm quite
surprised to learn that this is apparently meningitis after all, and also to see that they linked this
illness with lice. In Phillis, it seems as if her brain has simply been overloaded with all her grief
and despair. There are similar passages in other Victorian novels (Great
Expectations and Thackeray's Pendennis are two which come to mind) where
major characters collapse with fever after traumatic events in their lives.

I finished Cousin Phillis yesterday. On the weekend,
after reading Section III, I was speculating about how
it would end and what would make a powerful ending.
Needless to say, I didn't get close to the end we have.
It is a beautiful story and so well done.

The alternative endings that Gaskill considered are
very interesting. I think the most positive one,
where Phillis uses her knowledge and strength for what
you might call public good, is very like North and South
where Margaret also becomes an independent philanthropist.

The roles of Betty and Timothy remind me very strongly
of Hardy, (I know Ellen has also brought this up)
where 'low' characters are given plot turning
moments. Something Hardy was very much criticised for
at the time, as critics did not believe agricultural
labourers could be intelligent or witty.

Like Dagny, I thought of Lily Dale. Even the wording is
the same at times, with reference to her raw hurt.

"Only for a short time, Paul. Then -- we will go back to the peace
of the old days. I know we shall; I can, and I will!"

This is undoubtedly to me the most heart-rending 'speech' in the story.
Phillis wants to return to the safety/security of her childhood and does not
seem to realises that, like Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of
knowledge, she cannot 'unlearn' the lessons of adult life. Paralleling her
'loss of childhood' is the 'loss of innocence' of the countryside, shown by
the encroachment of the railway which incidentally brought Phillis's
'tutors of her adult life' to her. Gaskell has set her story in the Midlands
(like George Eliot's Middlemarch) where the most astonishing and many
early changes of the Industrial Revolution took place (think of names like
Mathew Bolton)

I really should be packing for my holiday and I kept being tempted away by
the PC. So I am now going to #tick the digest box' and retire for a couple
of weeks!

Does anybody know exactly what brain fever was? It seems to crop up so many times in
Victorian novels, as indeed do other mysterious fevers, but I'm not at all clear about what these
diseases were. I don't think brain fever can have been meningitis, because it so often seems to
be a drawn-out illness.

I remember reading somewhere that brain fever *was* meningitis, but I think that the
number of Victorian novel characters that succumb to it and live seems to indicate that the 'brain
fever' of Victorian novelists is not the same as the 'brain fever' of the medical profession. The
novel illness always follows a period of great stress and although stress can lower the body's
immune system and 'allow in' all sorts of infectious illnesses, the occurence in Victorian novels
still seems rather high. I have always respected D.H.Lawrence for 'killing off' Paul Morrell's
brother with erisypelas (sp?), but there again I think this reflected a true life event. And of course
so many in
the Victorian novel 'slipped into a decline' or were consumed by 'consumption', especially if their
clothes got too wet.

I am sure someone somewhere must have chosen for their dissertation 'The role of real or
invented illnesses in Victorian novels'! Perhaps I could set a WEA course in this for the
future....... I know I would enjoy it!

Love, Gwyn

To Trollope-l

August 10, 2000

Re: Cousin Phillis: Language and Italian Studies & The Ending

I shall quote what I am responding to so others will not have
to remember Judy's posting. About 19th century middle class
women learning a foreign language, she cited Sally Mitchell's
Daily Life in Victorian England:

"The most thoroughly educated Victorian women were probably
those who had been taught by their parents. A leisured father
who was interested in instructing his daughter, a mother who
enjoyed intellectual pursuits, and a well-stocked home library
provided a solid grounding in the basics and a lifetime habit of
independent learning. Educated women continued to pursue
new subjects throughout their adulthood. Studying languages
was especially widespread. Many women became thoroughly
competent translators by spending an hour or two every day
with a dictionary, a grammar, and a substantial book written in
another language."

I agree with Judy that this is not an easy thing to do; however,
evidence from realistic novels and memoirs of the period suggest
this is what was done. The Brontes studied German, French
and Italian by spending a couple of hours a day with
dictionary, grammar and substantial book in the target
language. We see this in Bronte's Jane Eyre where
the Rivers sisters and Jane study in order to become
teachers. I remember reading that George Eliot, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, the Lee sisters (later 18th century
writers), Effie Gray Ruskin Millais, all did this. In her
diary Fanny Burney records her self-motivated lessons
in Italian. So it was not just to become teachers either.

Still the truth is most of what we learn for real we learn at
home; it take hours, weeks, months, years, to get a
skill and keep it. This has, at any rate, been my experience,
and especially in languages. I learned what Italian I know
by spending at least an hour or two (mostly more like
4) for a couple of years with Italian dictionaries, grammar
and long books in Italian. I say what I know because
my Italian is not a spoken one. I have listened endlessly
to tapes (from an organisation which puts out a newspaper)
so I can attempt imaginatively to hear what I am reading;
but I have had little practice. My sense of Victorian and
other real women I have known who really wanted to learn
another language is my case is not atypical. Who has
the money or time or opportunity to go to school? By
opportunity I mean live in a place where there is such a
school. I liked the idea of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi
because it would then become that year's choice for
an Italian book. I aim at one a year nowadays.

As to French, the language I took in school, my ability
in it also comes from home learning of the same kind.
Yes I took it in school, but the homework and hours
assigned were as nothing for someone who really
wanted to be able to read the books or understand
the language if it was spoken to you. I would compare
this to the actual reading and writing assignments
my younger daughter gets at school; these are
as nothing compared to what she has written on
her own and put on her homepage. For French
what I did was besides school spend considerable
periods of time now and again with dictionary,
grammar and book. I did have an
opportunity to learn to speak when I was about 20-21
and at one time could make my way speaking French.
No more because language when not used that was
for me at least atrophies.

Perhaps one reason people never talk of this is it is
not common, and when people do what's not common,
they are not comfortable talking about it. I used
to belong to a society of literary translators and
there I met people who had done as I have. For
19th century women (and earlier ones too) we
should remember they were not allowed into good
colleges; French became the literary woman's
equivalent of the classics in the 18th century;
Italian and German were added in the 19th.

There are arguments that people are not easily
bilingual. Unless their circumstances forces them
to use more than one language frequently, they will
fall into one tongue. George Steiner disagrees, but
then he's trilingual partly out of circumstance.

As to the specific books mentioned by Gaskell, I
agree with Judy that each probably has some allusive
meaning. The Georgics celebrate man in nature;
I Promessi Sposi or The Bethrothed (to give
it the English title) is a novel of the risorgimento.
It is historical, but the point of view behind it is that
of a highly liberal enlightened 19th century man.
Many of the intellectuals of the 19th century in
England were deeply sympathetic to the ideals
of Italian liberation. Dante is about sin and
guilt and irretrievableness, among other things.

Still I would say probably Phillis learns Italian
because there was a strong movement towards
this literature & Italy among English and
American reading people in the second half of the
19th century. People went to Rome, colonies
of artists formed there; Dante was translated
and illustrated. It was a sign of aspiration towards
something beyond the diurnal immanences
of life. Here's a joke: note that Phillis does
not read any of George Sand's novels. This is
our sign we need not worry she will do anything
subversive of the establishment at all. I agree
there's something noble in the idea of her
growing into an independent philanthropic
woman, but would any of us want such a life?
Is it realistic? Maybe we are better off that
the book did not pull any punches.

I also agree with Judy that Phillis's near death
from 'brain fever' is a kind of metaphor: in
Victorian novels major characters do collapse
from trauma and instead of simply saying it
was a sickness brought on psychological trauma,
they give it a name. We do the same with
psychological troubles today, that is, give
them names which make it seem as if the
cause is biological or medical in lieu of
social, familial, personal.

This is just a quick note to say thank you very much to Ellen for all the
fascinating information and thoughts on the books mentioned in Phillis,
and on learning foreign languages both in Victorian times and nowadays.
I am full of admiration for all your work in learning Italian, Ellen - I
studied German at school and as a subsidiary subject at university, and also
worked in Germany as an au pair more than 20 years ago, but I have to admit
I'm growing rather rusty. As you say, it takes work and commitment to keep
up knowledge of a language.

I must also thank Gwyn for the information on brain fever and the comments
on Phillis' moving remarks at the end of the book. When I read this passage,
I was reminded of the haunting line from Shakespeare which is quoted by TS
Eliot: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" (Sorry, but I'm afraid I
can't remember where it comes in either Shakespeare or Eliot!)
Even though she hasn't actually "eaten the apple," Phillis has been forced
to grow up fast, and the sad fact is that she will never really be able to
return to the "peace of the old days," however much she wills it... any more
than she can start wearing those outgrown pinafores again.

Like Gwyn and Rory, I'm about to travel off - I'll actually be setting off
on holiday on Saturday but will be tearing about getting ready tomorrow. So,
in case I don't get a chance to post any more before I go, I'd just like to
say that I've really enjoyed our discussion on Cousin Phillis, and thanks
very much to everybody for joining in. It would be fun to read more Gaskell
with the group in the future.

I really liked the ending of Cousin Phillis. I actually got a little
misty-eyed reading that last line! Since I'd never read any Gaskell before
this, I half expected Phillis to die. What we get instead, is someone who's
been changed by her experience, and has gone through sorrow, but is
recovering and is ready to go out in the world again, to see things beyond
the farm.

I was also surprised to see that CP, not being a tragedy, ended up not being
a love story either, that Phillis didn't turn around and find some other man
and thereby find her Happy Ending. Phillis can be happy, without being
married, or even without being in love! I was surprised that that was the
resolution of the story.

Angela wrote:

"The alternative endings that Gaskill considered are
very interesting. I think the most positive one,
where Phillis uses her knowledge and strength for what
you might call public good, is very like North and South
where Margaret also becomes an independent philanthropist.

The story as it is, ended almost perfectly I thought. While it was a
*little* abrupt for Gaskell to have Phillis make that statement with not a
word after, it leaves a lot to the imagination and kept me thinking for a
while after I'd finished the story. I think denouement after that might
weaken the story. As summarized the further material smacks, IMO, of
carrying a point a little too far, depriving the story of subtlety, or
protesting too much. But a lot of my response to an "extended" Cousin
Phillis would depend on *how* this part of Phillis' story is told, and since
I've been delighted thus far... :)

One thing I found to be abrupt was the visit of the other Reverends (?) to
the Holman farm during Phillis' illness. Maybe if we'd had some hint of the
other men's attitude towards Mr. Holman's farming previous to this, the
scene wouldn't have seemed so much to come out of nowhere. It is a further
encroachment of the "outside world" on the stable life of the Holmans,
though, so it does fit in with one theme of the story.

I liked how Gaskell tells us about the essential change in the family caused
by Phillis' love. A number of times, Paul sees changes in Phillis that her
parents totally miss. The growing distance between Phillis and her father
was painful and true to life. The family has managed to resist change in
its essential dynamic, perhaps as the farm itself has managed to resist
change? But while the Holman family can't go back, that doesn't mean they
can't go forward. Any member of a family that's been together for a long
time would be able to associate with these feelings.

I've now gotten two serial episodes, six chapters, into Wives and
Daughters and am enjoying it just as much as Cousin Phillis! As I
mentioned off list to another member, it's going to take some self-control
to savor Gaskell's work rather than gobbling up everything she's written all
at once. It's going to be a wonderful vacation book.

Beth J.

To Trollope-l

August 12, 2000

Re: Women's Friendship and Cousin Phillis

Yesterday I came across a passage in Janet Todd's Women's
Friendship in Literature which bears directly on Phillis's
supposed brain fever. Todd studies many novels by women
from the 18th through the early 20th century and finds
that 'sickness merges into brain fever, a disease which
afflicts a horde of heroines.' Again and again in novels the
heroine becomes deathly ill; sometimes she dies, sometimes
she is merely shattered for life and altered into a resigned
being, sometimes she recovers, but when she does, she
retreats back into her family or a secure place. The latter
two options are versions of the same thing: if Phillis were
to have become a philanthropic unmarried woman, she
would be described by either phrase. Todd demonstrates
that in many of these novels sickness, madness, and
brain fever or death are metaphors for women's helplessness,
her writhing frustration.

Well in a way we knew this about Gaskell's depiction of
Phillis Holman already. However, Todd also throws a light
onto the narrative by pointing out to one of its curious
gaps or silences. Nowadays a lot of critics pay attention
to what's not in a text, and it's not always a species of
false legerdemain. In the course of the whole book,
Todd shows that one of the elements in these novels which
can save the heroine from sickness, brain fever, madness
and the like is a woman friend. Repeatedly a close woman
friend -- who may also be the heroine's sister or mother
or cousin -- provides a buttress against self-destruction:
the woman friend is the confidant; she gives advice,
support, helps the heroine to see more clearly and cope
better. The friend will give the heroine support to fulfill
her longings too. For those of us on this list who are
reading Diana of the Crossways, we know that a central
element in Diana's being able to cope with society after
her divorce is her friendship with Emma. Across his
books Trollope often shows us pairs of women friends.
He does sometimes show a woman friend who is (in
effect) a false friend: in The Vicar of Bullhampton
Janet Fenwick uses her friendship with Mary Lowther
to pressure Mary into marrying a man Mary does
not love so that Janet will have Mary's friendship
forever, and in so doing almost destroys both Mary
and the man she is pressuring Mary to marry. Trollope
also has a number of mothers whose behavior almost
destroys their daughters (or aunts their nieces) or
does destroy them (Mrs Carruthers, the aunt in
Linda Tressel, the mother in John Caldigate).
But often he presents women's friendship as a
central consolation and enabler for the women
characters: think of Lady Mason and Mrs Orme
in Orley Farm.

Phillis Holman is an unusual heroine for Gaskell.
She has no friend. We have been talking about how
she studies languages. While she cooks soup, she
holds her book over the pot. Books mean a great
deal to her. They are a substitute for a real
relationship, for she has none with her mother.
Her father is her one great friend, but he cannot
recognise she has become a sexual being. I
suggested earlier this week that an important implicit
theme in the book is Phillis's lack of a relationship
with her mother -- and her father's resignation
to his lot in life with a woman who is no companion
for him as an adult human being with whom he
can confide and lean on when things that count
inwardly -- and these are of terrific importance
in life -- happen. The woman Phillis has contact
with cannot understand; in fact, she is precisely
the sort of person who dismisses what is in
Phillis's mind and heart as somehow unimportant
or not there.

Now the interest here is in the apparent moral as
opposed to the emotional message of the text.
I would say the moral of the book is, Resign yourself.
The father again and again enacts behavior in
which he greatly respects everyone around him;
only at the close of the book when the dense
religious types come to him, does he nearly
crack under the strain of pretending to be comfortable.
They say precisely the thing that hurts most.
His whole way of life is a hymn to cheerful
resignation and conformity. At the close of the
book Phillis says she will get over it, and we
are made to feel that even if she doesn't do so
emotionally, she will become as her father was,
and are to hope she manages at least this.
This minimal fulfillment is all that is available --
as well as her books. Remember her father's
books and study to which he too returns as
an oasis.

However, the emotional message of the book is
very different. We feel intensely grieved for
Phillis. We mourn for her fate. She cannot begin
to live a fulfilled life as an individual with gifts
and talents of her own. She cannot meet a man
worthy of her -- there are too few.

I turn back to this male narrator. He is also a
voice of resignation in the book. He is someone
who himself doesn't have Phillis or her father's
intelligence and capacities, but unlike just about
everyone else in the book, he does appreciate
the difference and feels himself inadequate before
them. This is a curious choice of narrator until
we realise it works as a screen or shield for
Gaskell herself. She need not come out and
say what is the cause of the grief at the center
of the story. She can preach resignation, at
the same time as release in herself her own
frustrations and isolation and compromises.
After all she was a Phillis. She became the
woman in the family who gave all; she died
young. Now one of her greatest books, some
say her greatest, is the Life of Charlotte
Bronte. There she had found a friend,
a woman in whose friendship she could live
and whom she wanted the world to value
and to understand better. In a sense she
was doing this for herself too.

I suggest a key to the story is the lack of
a woman friend for Phillis, her lack of
relationship with her mother and her intense
friendship with the father who is himself
isolated similarly. In Wives and Daughters
Gaskell does produce a story out of the
uses of friendship between the heroine,
Molly, and her father's second wife's daughter.
She is supported by this daughter and supports
her and is almost destroyed in the process.
Yet the friendship is so precious. There too
we have a father who can find no companion
in his wife (the second wife is in fact a mean
small figure whose spite and stupidity and
mercenary qualities provide the crises of
the book); he is isolated, and at the same
time cannot look to his daughter for friendship
as their sexual difference (man and girl) keeps
them apart.

I begin to wonder more and more about Gaskell
herself and want to know about her novels in
general against her life. I hope we go on to
read more of them on this list.

Ellen Moody

PS: Since we have been talking about learning
languages, I'd like to say that I found nothing
odd or terribly strange about Phillis learning
a language while making soup. I first began
Italian by studying it one summer when I would
take my younger daughter to a pool every day.
For a few hours I would sit by a baby pool while
she swam; I would bring my Italian books and
study. As a woman I have often found myself
having to do tasks which are intellectually
wholly undemanding -- dull, boring -- and
so at the same time do something which is
a form of study or memorisation like learning
a language. It fills the time and emptiness.
I suggest that Gaskell herself studied in this
way: that is, in the interstices of time and
tasks she had to take on, she opened her
books. Through Phillis Elizabeth Gaskell
speaks to us of herself.